US President Barack Obama hosted six Gulf state representatives at Camp David for a summit May 14 with the goal of allaying the fears of Iran’s neighbors over the nuclear agreement taking shape between the superpowers and the ayatollahs.

The White House described the event as a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), but it would probably be more accurate to call it the “Summit of Concerned States,” given the apprehension with which America’s traditional allies in the Gulf and Middle East have been watching the Obama administration draw closer to Iran.

Although these concerns stretch across the entire region, two very worried — and very significant — countries were conspicuously absent from this summit. The first, Israel, has been expressing its concerns vociferously from every possible platform. There is no need to reiterate how opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to this agreement. He makes that crystal clear whenever he can. He speaks his mind, without spending too much effort on diplomatic language to conceal or even moderate his criticisms. The second was Turkey, which is also very concerned about rapprochement between the United States and Iran in general, and the blatant absence of various components (which it deems essential) in the emerging agreement in particular.

In an interview I conducted March 31 for Israel’s Channel 2 TV, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said that Turkey expects Iran to prove that it has no plans to develop its nuclear capabilities for military use. He said that any arrangement made with Tehran must include close supervision of its nuclear facilities to ensure that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon surreptitiously.

Read the article in full at Al-Monitor.